I have been pondering some ethics-related threads I’ve been following elsewhere, and in the process of so doing I’ve been mulling over an old ethical chestnut. That is, how general–or generalizable–or, to put it another way, universal–do the tenets of an ethical system have to be?
We have an intuition that the rules we follow are not just arbitrary, but somehow just. One definition of that would be that they apply to everyone in a similar situation. For example, the principal’s son shouldn’t get away with something that any other student couldn’t get away with. If I’m busted for speeding, it ought not to matter that I’m the judge’s cousin. Murder is wrong for anyone to commit; and so on.
We also have an intuition of extenuating circumstances and specific contexts. The guy who’s speeding to get his wife or child to the hospital isn’t likely to be judged as harshly (if at all) as someone who just treats the public highways as his own personal drag strip. In a society with pre-modern technology, women’s participation in some areas of the workforce might be less possible than in modern times. And so on here, too.
So where is the balance struck? Do ancients get a pass on slavery because conditions were different then, for example? Is the attempted destruction of the Canaanites by the Israelites in the Bronze Age different from the attempted destruction of the Jews by the Nazis in the Atomic Age? Is freedom of religion OK in some societies and not in others?
I think the problem here is that there is a danger of two extremes. Universal ethics can become a tyranny of enforcing exact, uniform, unchangeable rules on everyone, regardless of the situation, with no leniency, mercy, or exemptions. Javert’s attitude to Jean Valjean springs to mind in this case. Obviously, this is undesirable. The other extreme is moral relativism, which implies that every society (or perhaps even every individual) is a law unto itself. Thus, we can’t judge Nazis because their society was their ethical business. This, too, seems obviously wrong.
I think in a more subtle way this affects discussions of ethics. One can be so zealous in defending one’s ideals that counterexamples or possible extenuation circumstances are ignored. There is the feeling that if exceptions are allowed, the whole ethical system collapses. For example, if I were a vegetarian arguing that meat-eating is always wrong, and someone counters by saying, “What about the Inuit?” I am put in a bind. The Inuit were marvelously adapted to a diet of nearly 100% meat, even to the extent of deriving essential vitamins that most human populations get from plants by eating seal livers. They thrived on a diet that would be very bad for most humans, and when modern civilization moved many of them to a more modern Western diet with less meat and far more carbohydrates, the rates of diabetes, heart problems, and other such diseases skyrocketed for them.
Thus, in this hypothetical case, the argument for universality seems doomed. Thus, the person making the argument might feel threatened–”If meat’s OK for Inuit, then my opponents might ask why it’s not OK for others, too–and then my vegetarianism has no moral basis!”
For the record, I think there is a middle ground between “applies to everyone all the time under all conceivable sets of circumstances” and “whatever floats your boat”. I’m just not sure there’s a clear set of rules for finding such middle ground, or that there aren’t different ways of getting to it in different situations. In any case, this is why I’m not too keen on Kant’s Categorical Imperative (I know our Host likes it, but it to me it smacks too much of the aforementioned “applies to everyone all the time under all conceivable sets of circumstances”) or of moral relativism or systems that approach it (they smack too much of the “whatever” view of ethics).
Thoughts?
“A society has the ethics it can afford” – Niven and Pournelle
There’s probably a lot to that, unfortunately–hopefully we can continue to afford what we’ve got….
“A society has the ethics it can afford” – Niven and Pournelle
Sounds like some law firm advertising on late night TV
Well, we did have pretty long, and largely fruitless, though fascinating discussion along these lines, as to the existence of some “universal moral code.” And as I’m sure you know, it did get cantankerous in places.
I’ve always been clear that I do not believe there is nor ever has been any such universal moral/ethical code….nor any fixed “right” and “wrong” at any time in human development.
The fact that 75% to 80% of TODAY’S earthly population supports chattel slavery seems to attest to that fact. Large tracts of Asia, most of the Arab Middle East and virtually ALL of sub-Saharan Africa (save South Africa) still have chattel slavery to this day.
And given the custom that slave owners generally “vote FOR” (in place of) their slaves, we can presume that those population heavy areas all come down firmly on the “pro” side of chattel slavery. Add to that the fact that since slaves generally cannot envision anything other than a slave-based economy, they tend to voice support for chattel slavery despite their own predicament because they see no chance for survival in the outer world absent their present condition.
So it’s NOT just the “ancients” who need and get a pass on chattel slavery, but the overwhelming majority of today’s earthly population that does! AND what’s more, it’s freely given to them!
YES, Western Europe and North America were the first to eradicate chattel slavery, but they weren’t much followed in that regard at all. What’s more, how committed to abolition are we when we simply ignore the FACT that most of the rest of the world STILL engages in that time honored “tradition?”
I think that simple dichotomy puts into very clear focus that there is no common human “moral” or ethical code.
We can’t say anything like, “Modern humans oppose chattel slavery,” we can ONLY say that “Modern Westerners (Western Europe, Australia, North America, Japan) eschew chattel slavery, while much of the rest of the world STILL engages in it.”
What humans have is a virtually limitless capacity for rationalization. Earlier Western slave owners somewhat correctly, if paternalistically defended the practice by noting that “These wretches could not survive on their own outside of such strictures.” Many of them DID actually see their ownership as a form of “charity!”
Likewise, the pirates of the 18th Century saw themselves as free men willing to fight and defend their “free-wheeling lifestyles.” Many of them were “recruited” (taken) off slave ships, including Bart Roberts (the longest tenured and “most successful” pirate of the post-privateer era) and piracy greatly reduced the slave trade. In 1726 (the year after Roberts death) the number of slaves transported to the Americas from Africa jumped from around 25,000 to over 60,000. So…if the trans-Atlantic slave trade was bad, was piracy “good?” Did the inadvertent suppression of the slave trade make Roberts’ and other’s misdeeds more moral/ethical?
Perhaps, in light of the brutal unfairness of that day’s caste-like social order, such activities and such people need no “rationalizing” at all.
In as much as we often overlook the widespread use of chattel slavery today, we also deliberately, even insistently overlook how brutally “civilization” has been forged. The rise of the nation-state required the mass subjugation of an often unwilling populace. England hung offenders “from the Gibbets” until the chains would no longer hold the decaying corpses (as warnings to others), they’d publicly draw and quarter others, the French liberally applied the use of the Iron maiden, the Guillotine, etc to dissuade dissent.
An institution forged in personal dishonor, widespread deceit and individual destruction can’t possibly forge a moral/ethical code that is based on anything else, can it?
Such rationalizations stem from one human trait that seems nearly universal – our desperate desire to always and everywhere explain why that which benefits our own narrow interests is really the best for all, which is probably why, in the end, “meaning well,” rarely amounts to actually “DOING well.”
…and virtually ALL of sub-Saharan Africa (save South Africa) still have chattel slavery to this day.
I lived in Malawi from 1989 to 1991.
There was no chattel slavery there then.
I didn’t observe, and haven’t heard reported, any chattel slavery in Kenya, either. Actually, it’s my understanding that most of sub-Saharan Africa doesn’t currently have chattel slavery.
Didn’t see any slavery in Madagascar, either.
I think this is more of the typical nonesense from Mr. JMK.
As is usual Hector, I’ve never posted anything I haven’t substantiated with numerous documented links….(as I did so above).
Here are some more, for those who may have missed the initial documentation.
No one else has offered anything but UNSUBSTANTIATED anecdotal accounts…”I didn’t see it (here)…” etc.
“In a joint statement with the Association for World Education, IHEU has strongly criticized the continuation of chattel slavery affecting more than 600,000 people in sub-Saharan Africa exacerbated by weak legislation, corruption and complicity.”
Trafficking In Sub-Saharan Africa
“Most countries in Sub-Saharan Africa are both a source and a destination country for men, women, and children subjected to trafficking for the purpose of forced labor and forced prostitution.
“According to the U.S. Department of State’s 2010 Trafficking in Persons Report, most countries in Sub-Saharan Africa are both a source and a destination country for men, women, and children subjected to trafficking for the purpose of forced labor and forced prostitution. In other words, in these countries, unscrupulous people exploit, coerce, abduct or purchase individuals for the purpose of enslaving them. A few, like Niger, Mali, and Mauritania, still allow caste-based slavery practices rooted in ancestral master-slave relationships.”
http://www.voanews.com/policy/editorials/Trafficking-In-Sub-Saharan-Africa-97177479.html
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“Recently, we have seen the revival of the once thriving slave trade routes across West Africa, after a lapse of 25 years. Slavers have reappeared following the old slave trade routes, except that trucks, jeeps and modern four-wheel drive vehicles and, on occasions, aircraft, have replaced the camels. The slavers often carry mobile telephones.
“Some things, however, have not changed. Cunning, deceit, the use of drugs to subdue the children and the whip still remain part of the essential equipment of the professional slaver.
“The children are kidnapped or purchased for $20 – $70 each by slavers in poorer states, such as Benin and Togo, and sold into slavery in sex dens or as unpaid domestic servants for $350.00 each in wealthier oil-rich states, such as Nigeria and Gabon.
“These children are bought and sold as slaves. They are denied an education, the chance to play or to use toys like other children, and the right to a future. Their lives are at the mercy of their masters, and suicide is often the only escape.”
http://www.anti-slaverysociety.addr.com/slavetrade.htm
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Of course the point ISN’T whether chattel slavery exists in sub-Saharan Africa (it clearly DOES), China, as does much of Asia relies upon slave labor and so does most of the Arab-Muslim world.
Indeed the REAL point is that the vast majority of the “MODERN world” supports/condones slavery, which pretty much suggests that there are widely varying “moral/ethical codes” that exist and are accepted by differing people at differing times.
It also clearly shows that not only was the West (primarily England, France and the U.S.) the FIRST to eradicate chattel slavery, but the ONLY humans to do so.
It is often easy for those who live in the West and thus take for granted its illumination to forget that the West remains an island of rationality in a veritable cesspool of savagery.
“I lived in Malawi from 1989 to 1991…..There was no chattel slavery there then.” (JE)
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Hey! I was in what was then Rhodesia for 7 months and 17 days in 1978. I didn’t see any slavery there, although we weren’t there for that. I DID weaponize dried snake venom…a warned me not to touch something that turned out to have dried venom on it one day, saying that dried venom was actually more concentrated and more toxic than the “wet venom” delivered in a bite and once the dried venom came in contact with an open cut or other moist openings on a body it was highly toxic.
I knew that to weaponize such a substance you had to grind it down to between 5 and 8 microns (so it’d be deeply breathed into the lungs) and then aerosolized using an aerosolizing agent like silica.
It was very effective when tried out…any open cuts, one’s eye’s an any mucosa were portals for this substance. Worked great but proved too costly to implement on a wide scale.
While we didn’t see any chattel slavery, I’m afraid such an observation would be akin to a visitor saying, “I was in America for a year and didn’t see much of any democracy there.” I could easily believe a person making such an observation, but they probably didn’t know where to look…or what to look for, right?
I’ve taken that above observation from such sources as; http://www.iss.co.za/pubs/asr/12no1/e2.pdf
China, the Arab-Muslim world and other highly populous regions are also rife with slavery. England, France and the USA tend to see themselves (“the West”) as “the world,” so, as is so often the case, they appear to have congratulated themselves a bit early….maybe VERY early on this score! Looking around, it appears very little of the rest of the world has followed that lead.
Sure, it’s possible to live in a country for some time, and not observe chattel slavery, and have it exist in that country; for instance, one could have made such an observation living in the North of the US at the time that slavery was practiced in the South. But in fact, I’ve followed human rights reports about Africa, and slavery complaints are made about some countries and not others (and about particular areas in some countries, not necessarily legal under the relevant country’s laws); I don’t see the evidence to say that it exists in most of sub-Saharan Africa. I think the reverse is true; slavery is found in some parts of sub-Saharan Africa, but not in most of sub-Saharan Africa.
What are you using as the definition of chattel slavery? A person owned by another entity, who can be bought and sold, with no contractural rights, and the ownership enforced in a court of law. This is chattel slavery. I suspect that like corporatism, you stretch the definition.
“In a joint statement with the Association for World Education, IHEU has strongly criticized the continuation of chattel slavery affecting more than 600,000 people in sub-Saharan Africa exacerbated by weak legislation, corruption and complicity.”
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Trafficking In Sub-Saharan Africa
“Most countries in Sub-Saharan Africa are both a source and a destination country for men, women, and children subjected to trafficking for the purpose of forced labor and forced prostitution.
“According to the U.S. Department of State’s 2010 Trafficking in Persons Report, most countries in Sub-Saharan Africa are both a source and a destination country for men, women, and children subjected to trafficking for the purpose of forced labor and forced prostitution. In other words, in these countries, unscrupulous people exploit, coerce, abduct or purchase individuals for the purpose of enslaving them. A few, like Niger, Mali, and Mauritania, still allow caste-based slavery practices rooted in ancestral master-slave relationships.”
http://www.voanews.com/policy/editorials/Trafficking-In-Sub-Saharan-Africa-97177479.html
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There really isn’t any other kind of “slavery.”
Certainly “debt-slavery” amounts to “chattel slavery, as does “prion-based slave labor,” the kind used widely in China.
Regardless, the above seem to document actual “chattel slavery” throughout most of sub-Saharan Africa.
“Debt slaves” are not usually bought and sold, although under the “holder in due course” doctrines of the Uniform Commercial Code, they theoretically could be, the same way your mortgage can be bought and sold.
“One of our guides warned me not to touch something that turned out to have dried venom on it…”
Kant’s Categorical Imperative is, first, only useful insofar as one is interested in egalitarianism as a value; it is entirely possible to construct a completely just ethical system based on the notions that different castes, defined however one wishes – race, age, religion, gender, particular family, individuals named Turmarion – have their respective ethical roles to inhabit. When they inhabit those roles dutifully, their behavior is ethical, when they transgress it, unethical.
If one is interested in an egalitarian ethical system, though, and if one understands that all ethical systems describe ideal interpersonal behavioral values, there is to my knowledge no statement superior to Kant’s. You are, of course, free to provide or produce a superior one, but I don’t think the squishy Mama Bear position you’ve outlined above will get you very far as any sort of defining ethical ideal. For one thing, your example of vegetarianism opportunistically scrambles the concepts of mores (non-transactional non-interpersonal behavior) and ethics (transactional interpersonal behavior), trying to pass off the former as the latter, which is usually the method religions, for example, utilize to suggest that their particular behaviors should be mandated for all. For another, the law does not look as kindly upon hysterical Dagwoods speeding their imminently natal Blondies to the hospital as you would conveniently want to suggest in order to build your example upon it.
I think if you take a moment to separate out all the various elements you’ve indiscriminately conflated above, good Turmarion, you might have a different set of problems to analyze. For example, where exactly do empathy, or pity, or cutting someone slack, or feeling better about oneself for having done so, fit into the structure of a system we would describe as ethical instead of as “good suggestions”? Not that they don’t, but if they do, you must explain why ethics requires them and what roles they play in constituting ethics.
In fact, my understanding of what constitutes ethics is of systems that, at least ideally, are ironclad and uncompromising – that’s what enables them to function as ethics rather than as something else, particularly against a constant background of imminent nihilistic entropy. To describe something else, to my mind, is to describe variously more or less rational, and more or less rationalized, opportunisms, not ethics.
Here’s a thought, too: we have among our Authors several who have spent more or less time in the military, some as officers. If I am not mistaken, the standards of interpersonal behavior I am defining as ethics are more popularly understood in the military by the term “duty”. Perhaps one or more of those veteran Authors might usefully shed some light on what we are discussing in abstracto by referring to their own experiences with ethics in the form taught and practiced as duty.
H. M. Stuart
Alexandria
I assume that the majority of the readers here, having (I assume) grown up in a country that is (purportedly, at least) very egalitarian, would tend to favor egalitarian systems of ethics. That the Categorical Imperative, as you point out, doesn’t really have any way of opposing a hierarchical system, is, IMO, a weakness. Maybe, in fact, that’s a better example than the vegetarian one, which was admittedly off the cuff. If you say, “Act as if what you’re going to do is to be a universal law,” and I reply, “I don’t believe in universal laws–people shouldn’t be treated alike,” then what is to be done? To put it another way, on what bases is one to argue that an egalitarian system is “better” (or can one even do that?)? Alternately, if I am going to steal, and I think, “Well, if I do that I must will it to be a universal law,” but then I go on to say, “If I get caught, then they should do to me as I’d want to have done to someone that stole from me–but I’m too slick to get caught–therefore I’ll steal!”–then once more, what do you do?
I’ve actually known people like this–they have the idea of “what goes around comes around” in a broad way, but their attitude is that they will therefore strive all the harder not to get caught–and that’s really their categorical imperative: “Do whatever you damn well please, and do it well enough to get away with it; and if not, tough s***!” In other words, they assume that everyone is on the make and that anything that you can get away with is OK; and, from their perspective, they’re following the Categorical Imperative just fine. What does one do with that?
Understand, I have respect for Kant (though I think his metaphysics is cracked) and the Imperative; I just think it doesn’t necessarily work as advertised.
In fact, my understanding of what constitutes ethics is of systems that, at least ideally, are ironclad and uncompromising….
Well, that’s pretty much the point I was making, or at least an aspect of it. If a system is “ironclad and uncompromising”, is that a feature or a bug? Deontological–duty-based–ethical systems tend to be that way. The problem with deontological systems–or if you prefer, “harsh and ironclad” systems, or even “doing your duty no matter what”–is that they allow little wiggle room to deal with various circumstances, and they assume that duty in and of itself is enough justification for its edicts. From a strict deontological view, for example, the perpetrators of the Holocaust, the My Lai Massacre, etc., were perfectly justified and morally irreproachable since they were just “following orders”–carrying out their duties. Some of us would argue that “empathy, pity, or cutting someone slack” are there exactly to override duty when it calls for unjust action. Or put it another way: would you be OK with someone destroying your town to save it (to coin a phrase), or with people killing those with Scottish surnames because it was “their duty”? A strictly deontological ethic would seem to admit of such.
For that matter are you (or anyone else here) down with Kant’s strictness to the extent of his famous example that one may not lie even to save the life of an innocent pursued by a murderer who asks you where his prey fled? Or to give a more modern example, if lying, by the Categorical Imperative, is always wrong, does that mean it’s even wrong to lie to the Nazis about the Jews you’re hiding?
Or to give a more modern example, if lying, by the Categorical Imperative, is always wrong, does that mean it’s even wrong to lie to the Nazis about the Jews you’re hiding?
My good Turmarion,
In all the examples you provide above you are confusing Kant’s autonomously driven CI with some type of heteronomously imposed religious catechism while chafing at the picayune restrictions you find in the latter. It is not necessary that one obey Kant as if he were your Pope. It is necessary that one does not will unto oneself special ethical privileges not equally and universally available to all.
Applied, this means one should always lie to the Nazis about the Jews you were hiding. The Kantian CI does not mandate a one-dimensional world of values contemplated only in isolation one from another, and in our real world of multiplex, internested values, the value of the Jews’ lives trumps the value of truth-telling. It is the CI itself that is universally ironclad, not, as you mistakenly interpret it, any single ethical value in clerical isolation.
You would not be the first to misinterpret Kant’s CI as some sort of preexisting universal (or not) ethical code, some sort of externally imposed diktat, like the Ten Commandments, Canons of the RCC, and similar heteronomomous restrictions. It is, instead, a prescription by which an active, autonomous will can create ongoing, universalizeable ethics purely out of itself alone while avoiding self-serving nihilism.
H. M. Stuart
Alexandria
Funny how “Thou shalt not lie.” becomes a commandment when “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.” is the actual commandment. Quite a difference. Lieing in of itself doesn’t seem to be forbidden or a sin. Circumstances matter, and as you point out, should that action always be taken in that circumstance seems to be the question.
Um, no. There are numerous explicit scriptural condemnations of all lying. As well as the natural law and/or virtue ethics arguments against lying (lying perverts the faculty of speech, makes us less Christlike, reduces our integrity, etc.). E.g. Revelation 21:8, “Outside are dogs, and sorcerers, and murderers, and whoremongers, and idolators, *and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie.*” That isn’t to say it’s always the wrong thing to do, often it’s the lesser evil and/or a necessary evil, but it’s certainly always something unfortunate, and the result of the fact we live in a corrupt world.
The Catholic Church seems to be the worst offender here. “Thou shalt not commit adultery” becomes “thou shalt not commit sexual impurity,” which can be extended to include fornication, heavy petting, masturbation, and even “impure thoughts” (though the latter ought logically to be more closely related to not coveting one’s neighbor’s wife, except then how do you apply it to females?)
You would not be the first to misinterpret Kant’s CI as some sort of preexisting universal (or not) ethical code….
In that case, I suggest that the first to misinterpret the CI thus was Kant himself, since he’s the one who gave the example of not lying even to prevent a murder.
It is, instead, a prescription by which an active, autonomous will can create ongoing, universalizeable ethics purely out of itself alone while avoiding self-serving nihilism.
Agreed–but different active, autonomous wills might have different ethical notions that they want to universalize. Not a problem if each lived on a desert island or in a “permanent autonomous zone” of the type envisioned by Hakim Bey, in which literally anything goes. For those of us who live in actually existing human societies, that’s a knottier problem, which was my point.
My good Turmarion,
In that case, I suggest that the first to misinterpret the CI thus was Kant himself, since he’s the one who gave the example of not lying even to prevent a murder.
Indisputably, but such things are neither as bizarre nor as rare as they may seem; thinkers frequently do not fully plumb the implications of their novel thought systems.
For example, were a Jew under threat from Nazism to hold Kant’s absolute prohibition against lying within the context of the CI, that is, that Lutheran Fritz concealing him should tell the Nazis the truth of his hiding, the result would be indistinguishable from suicide. More generally, any ethical system that does not take self-preservation (preservation of one’s life, not one’s convenience) as a foundational principle soon becomes moot anyway.
Differently examined, given an independent, absolute, indiscriminate prohibition on lying, of what use then is the first formulation of the CI? It’s already been handicapped. On the other hand, the CI without the simple lying proscription becomes a far more nuanced and powerful general ethical tool. They are clearly incompatible, so choose your tool. I choose the CI over and against the simplistic lying prohibition for its superior utility (yes, I know it’s a categorical imperative, but I’m still just post-academically stubbornly pragmatic and utilitarian that way).
Agreed–but different active, autonomous wills might have different ethical notions that they want to universalize. Not a problem if each lived on a desert island or in a “permanent autonomous zone” of the type envisioned by Hakim Bey, in which literally anything goes. For those of us who live in actually existing human societies, that’s a knottier problem, which was my point.
As I recall, I addressed this in the prior long thread by saying that the ultimate realized CI will be, must be the net precipitate negotiated of all CIs which human wills will advance. For example, many of them will be contaminated with mores – no pulled pork for you, son; au contraire! – and so forth; those will more clearly simply be abandoned to the respective tribes which hold them as tribal mores and nothing more. On the other hand, any who persist in insisting on their ethical right to catch babies on bayonets will likely be eliminated from the gene pool sooner or later, after which that maxim has now become, at least effectively, an actually universal ethical maxim. The ultimate actual universal ethical code Kant’s CI makes possible, then, (pre)”universal” will by test by (pre)”universal” will by test, will ultimately be realized as the sum of all such no longer opposed code-fragment maxims.
Those that will ultimately make the cut are probably not as few and far between as one might imagine, and those that don’t will most likely be exposed as little more than opportunistic busybodyness that don’t deserve to.
H. M. Stuart
Alexandria
Aquinas, of course, also said that it was a sin (though only a venial one) to lie to a murderer. His reasoning- and the Scholastic mode of reasoning on this point generally- was very different than Kant’s though. Aquinas argued that the natural end of speech is to convey what is in our mind, and therefore to use speech to convey something we do not believe is to use speech contrary to its natural purpose, and thus to pervert the faculty of speech. Which would be wrong.
I think Kant’s categorical-imperative argument is preposterous. (Why is it necessary, after all, that a moral norm be universalizable? The moral obligations that one person might have, in a certain set of circumstances, are very different than those another person might have in another). I think that Aquinas’ argument about natural ends and perverted faculties is much stronger, though I still don’t agree with it.
In general, I’m critical of both deontological and consequentialist modes of moral reasoning. I go back and forth between the Scholastic, natural-law moral theory of Aquinas, and the more Platonistic, virtue ethics type of moral reasoning, and I can see merits in both approaches. (In general I think virtue ethics is better, but Scholastic natural law has some important insights too).
Many of the cultures among which Jews fared best during the Holocaust were not “nice people” in the most Western sense of the phrase (nor was Schindler, for that matter)–they were just easy-going, corrupt, and had “issues with authority.”
I prefer the Jesuit doctrine of “mental reservation” to the Kantian imperative of truth-telling. Merely asking a question does not give a person a moral right to a truthful answer. If such a person is not willing to be satisfied with “none of your business,” s/he may have to make do with “I did not have sex with that woman…”
Also, Jewish religious law, resting on the Levitical prohibition against “putting a stumbling block before the blind” forbids asking a question if you know it will elicit a lie. So much for Ken Starr.
Right. The legal systems of the Vikings, Saxons, and other Norse types, as well as the code of Hammurabi, clearly depended on class distinctions, not only in terms of who could do what to whom, but also of how much they had to pay for the privilege of doing it.
One thing about Kant’s Categorical Imperative is that sometimes it’s possible for either one of several competing rules to work as a universal law. I think that this is often true, for instance, when it comes to sexual ethics (and one reason sexual ethics can be so contentious). But it is a test that at least rules some things out, and the set of things it rules out seems to me a set of things I’d want ruled out.
[T]he ultimate realized CI will be, must be the net precipitate negotiated of all CIs which human wills will advance.
Something like that is probably likely. I just hope the net result isn’t a mess. Maybe I’m a pessimist, but I suspect that outside of the more egregious things like misuse of bayonets which most people and cultures would agree on ending, there could be lots of unpleasant ways that the more general negotiation of all CI’s could go awry. I guess that as the era of globalization progresses we’ll see.
Hector – I site only the 10 Commandments, laws purportedly passed down from God. There are also instances in the Bible where lying and deceit are celebrated as it benefited the Hebrews. The story of Jael being one example (including murder in this case0: Judges 4:17-21.
You attempt to refute my argument by expanding beyond what I said or intended to say.
There are also places in which lying, or at least withholding part of the truth, was practiced even by G-d, which strongly suggests an endorsement.